Danny Hoang loves mangoes — juicy Brazilian mangoes, just like the ones he’s having to work with for his cookery challenge at WorldSkills Sao Paulo today.
The Team UK 21-year-old, who studied at Westminster Kingsway College and now works at Colette’s, in the Grove Hotel, near Watford, spent day one of the competition yesterday preparing for his three-course meal, to be made today.
And his menu is set to include mangoes.
Speaking at the end of day one, yesterday, he said: “We didn’t present any dishes today, it was just all preparation, but we have got to do a three-course dinner tomorrow.
“It’s a soup starter, chicken main course and then we have to use some of the really beautiful mangoes they have in Brazil.
“The mangoes are so much bigger and juicier here — I love them. They pose their own challenge but you’ve just got to use your instinct to work with it because the food can be so variable and so different.”
He added: “I had a good morning but there’s still such a long competition to go. I still think there’s some small minor things I could do better but that’s just me reflecting — it’ still early days.”
It was an eye-opener day for Danny, who just missed out in selection for WorldSkills Leipzig two year ago, before storming to gold at Lille EuroSkills last summer.
“WorldSkills is such a bigger competition — more than double the number of countries for every skills and it’s so much more vast,” he said.
On the patisserie and confectionery stand right next to Danny, 21-year-old Mikaela Wright, from City of Glasgow College, was getting to grips with marzipan manipulation.
“I was setting up for doing chocolates tomorrow [Thursday] and I presented my marzipan figures,” she said last night.
“There was a hot dog, a clown’s face, a monkey and a clock [pictured right). The clown’s face was the most difficult part because doing a human’s face because it’s trickier than doing an animal’s.”
She added: “I had a quick look at some other competitors’ work, but I feel good even though some were really good. I’m pretty happy with how today went. I think I just need to speed it up a bit — not because I was slow, but because the rest of the week is so full-on I want to keep up my speed.”
Meanwhile carpenter Owain Jones, 21 and from Coleg Meirion Dwyfor, in North Wales, had been getting stuck into geometric challenges.
“I’ve got a base with complicated joints in it — dovetails and big chunky joints — and a roof to go on top with complex rafters in it,” he said.
“There’s a lot of geometry in it and there’s a dormer to finish it off. I think all the training is coming into play now and it’s not as daunting as you might think because of all the training I’ve had and I’m just working my way through. I’m quite happy with it at the moment.”
Mechatronics duo Andy Smith, 21, and Robyn Clarke, 22, who both train and work for Toyota Manufacturing UK, were also happy with their progress.
“Over the four days we have six tasks — the first one today we knew about, a ‘known’ task, and then a maintenance task, which had a time pressure on it” said Andy, from Buxton, in Derbyshire.
“But it’s been about as difficult as we thought it would be. I’m more than happy with where we are.”
Robyn, from Burton-on-trent, said: “It couldn’t have gone any better today — everything’s functional and working, it’s just the time. The time was the only thing that would distinguish us from other teams, but there were no marks lost that we can think of.”
As A-level students up and down the country nervously thumb open envelopes that could determine where their lives will head next, David Allison, managing director of apprentice recruitment service getmyfirstjob.co.uk, will be one of those nodding with sympathy.
“It’s just such a tense moment — I can still remember when I opened the letter on results day,” he says.
“And I didn’t quite get what I wanted.”
Allison, aged 41, admits his attitude to school was somewhat calculating.
“I was never an a star pupil — I used to enjoy all the other things that weren’t to do with work, so if there was any kinds of sports going on, I was involved,” he says.
From left: Allison’s brother Philip, with Allison aged 17
“But academically, I did just enough work to get through and I was very good at judging what I had to do to scrape across a line, and not do anything else.”
However, Allison’s parents, Paula and John, a GP and a pharmacist respectively, had other ideas.
“There was the expectation that you would concentrate on education but also that you would go to university and do one of the traditional subjects,” says Allison.
“So when I started talking about doing engineering, they were like: ‘Hold on, what is engineering and why are you not doing something properly traditional?’”
But he says although he’d never been interested in following in their footsteps to a medical career – “it looked too much like hard work” — something of his parents did rub off on him.
“That is the whole idea of helping other people, that is very strong in our family,” he says.
Allison may not have got the results he hoped for, but they were enough to send him to Brunel University to study engineering with French, on a course that he describes as being almost like an early “graduate level apprenticeship”, with six months a year studying, and six months in industry.
Allison found himself employed by Ford, and discovered on arriving at work that he would be sent to Germany two days a-week, as well as getting the opportunity to visit the research facilities at Cern, in Geneva.
“The opportunity to go and get the experience of places like that opened my eyes a lot to what was possible — having just grown up in one small relatively sleepy town outside Gloucester,” he says.
After finishing his degree, he went on to work for Ford full time, and among his achievements can boast being responsible for the oval Ford logo on the 1996 Fiesta.
However, he began to get the sense that “just working on widgets wasn’t going to be the thing for me”.
“I discovered I could get limited satisfaction out of working on that really,” he explains.
“But I did start to spend a bit of time with the marketing team and started to understand that there’s more to life than engineering — it’s about the way that people interact with products.”
As a graduate he was placed in different departments of the company, however, a mix-up in the rota led to him being “dumped” in the training department by mistake.
“I was supposed to be there for three months and about three years later they took me out kicking and screaming because the whole thing around actually helping people improve and do jobs differently was just so much more rewarding that engineering — even for fabulous cars,” says Allison.
After a brief sojourn to another part of the company, Allison returned to training, where he eventually stayed for more than a decade.
“I really got excited by the people side of it, and I spent a long time doing people development,” he says.
“The idea was that the same level of education should be there to support you, everywhere from when you’re 16 leaving school to when your 45 or 50 but you need to give yourself new skills.
“So we ran everything from sub-level two entry programmes through to master’s degrees and that was phenomenal.
Allison aged 6
“I discovered adult education by mistake and have never been able to get out of it.”
In 2000, Allison married Ford colleague Lisa, but found he was falling “out of love” with the motoring industry and big business.
“I began to get frustrated by the way in which big companies lose sight of what’s really important,” he says.
“Even though we were a very, very successful part of the organisation, and made pretty good money, we were told to slash our budgets by accountants in Detroit.
“So we had to make lots of good people redundant — one of which was my wife.”
Lisa, who had just given birth to the couple’s daughter, Emma, now 11, took the opportunity to do a degree, but Allison says, the episode “made me want to be more in control of my own destiny”.
So, in 2005, he left Ford behind to work for the defunct, and infamous independent learning provider Carter and Carter, first in the outsourcing business and then in the funded learning part of the business, which, he says, putting it mildly, “was encountering a couple of problems at the time”.
“And it was quite a shame because it was in many ways my dream job, but it became probably the most torrid 18 months of my life,” he says.
The company — once valued at £550m — eventually went in to administration after the tragic death of its founder Phillip Carter, and was bought out my NCG (formerly Newcastle College Group).
The experience made Allison decide the time was right to branch for himself, and after several years of freelance consultancy, he hit upon the idea for getmyfirstjob.co.uk in 2011, when his attempts to arrange apprentices for a business he was working with were thwarted by a college’s slow response.
Inspired by high street recruitment agencies offering to find candidates in under a fortnight to suit business timeframes, he “dusted off” his engineering skills and designed the program from which the website would run.
“It started off as a very simple process which was all about how you take applications and deliver them as quickly as possible to the employer and how you get the young person their first job and keep them engaged,” he says.
The organisation now has, says Allison, 200,000 candidates in the system, and works with 75 different providers round the country.
The secret of the company’s approach, he says, is that it reverses the usual process.
“Instead of saying ‘OK, you want to be an engineer, great’, we say, ‘Here are 15 engineering jobs in your area, so let’s use those to work out if this is the right career for you — this starts at 7am, how do you feel about that?’
“So by giving that real info on real vacancies at the time when they’re having the conversations, the quality of the conversation goes through the roof, rather than some tick box approach to careers advice.
“You have to turn the whole thing on its head and have a really proactive search, where you say ‘If you’re interested in this now, I’ll talk to you and place you now’.”
But like many in the FE sector, Allison is keen to emphasise that apprenticeships aren’t just for low-achieving learners.
It’s a balance, he says, between getting learners and parents to understand apprenticeships can be an alternative to university, and at the same time that those who start at a level two can “progress all the way up”.
“It is possible but we need to spell it out more quickly,” he says.
For those faced with a choice about their future today, he warns they should make their choice carefully.
“It does cause everybody to question what the next step for them is,” he says.
“So you think university’s the option for you go, for it — but make sure you’ve looked at all the other options before you make that decision because it’s a really big one.”
It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book
Allison aged 10 with dog MacTannish
Almost anything by John Grisham because it’s a great way of winding down
What do you do to switch off from work?
Anything to do with water. Living near Chichester is a good place to be — I do a lot of teaching sailing, canoeing, or just swimming in the sea, anything that gets me in the water
What’s your pet hate?
Probably people who are negative for no reason. There are so many opportunities out there, and I do struggle with people who refuse to see them
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be?
As competition at WorldSkills 2015 gets into full swing in Brazil, the Association for Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) has urged independent learning providers (ILPs) to get more involved in future competitions.
Chief executive Stewart Segal gave a run-down of what WorldSkills is and why it is “important” that more ILPs give their learners the chance to compete, in the weekly AELP bulletin sent out to members.
It was issued the morning after around 1,200 flag-bearing competitors took part in the parade of nations at the spectacular WorldSkills opening ceremony, at a venue around four miles from where competitions have now begun at Anhembi Park, Sao Paulo.
His encouragement was welcomed by WorldSkills UK and Skills Show organising body Find a Future.
Mr Segal said: “The commitment of the young people involved in WorldSkills is fantastic and this event provides a great opportunity to promote apprenticeships and work based learning.”
He added: “As the focus on skills continues in the UK it is really important that training providers encourage their trainees to take part in skills competitions.
“We are working with Find a Future to encourage more training providers to get more involved in running the competitions, encouraging their employers to get involved and most importantly to use the competitions and Skills Shows as a way of demonstrating the high level of skills that their apprentices can achieve through effective work based training programmes.”
Mr Segal also paid tribute to current WorldSkills competitors who have come from ILPs.
They include auto technology competitor Elijah Sumner, aged 20, from Cardiff, Wales, who is training with Provq, in Shrewsbury, and car painting competitor Rebecca Wilson, from County Down in Northern Ireland, 22, who trained at Riverpark Training in Antrim.
He said: “For some of our competitors it is the culmination of a long period of training and commitment.”
He added: “We wish them every success this week.”
Carole Stott, chair of Find a Future, echoed Mr Segal’s comments.
She said: “I would urge training providers of all sizes to investigate the opportunities which involvement in skills competitions provide, either for skilled members of staff or as a partner organising the actual competitions. The benefits are there for the taking for all.”
She added: “Our research has shown skills competitions bring benefits for both the individual and for their employers, with increased productivity and profitability for business, as well as better job satisfaction, a more motivated workforce and a greater range of skills being passed on to staff as a result of competition training.
“The young people currently competing in São Paulo are great examples of how skills competitions can have positive effects on both individuals and businesses.”
FE Week will be in Brazil with Team UK throughout WorldSkills which closes on Sunday (August 16) and you can follow all the action at Feweek.co.uk and @FEWeek.
Sector leaders have hailed the “fantastic” satisfaction rates of students at FE colleges with higher education courses in spite of huge cutbacks facing the sector, as revealed in the latest National Student Survey.
More than 300,000 final-year students responded to the survey this year, from 190 FE colleges, and 160 other higher education institutions across the country.
It showed that the overall satisfaction rate for higher education learners on full-time courses at FE colleges remained at 80 per cent, the same as in the 2014 survey, while eight further education colleges gained student satisfaction ratings of 100 per cent.
Dr Lynne Sedgmore CBE (pictured right), executive director of the 157 Group, said: “Given the current challenging financial situation, it is a testament
to college leaders that student satisfaction remains strong.”
She added that higher education programmes offered in FE colleges attract thousands of students a year because of their “really high quality”.
“They are delivered by well-qualified staff with excellent links to industry and, in many cases the programmes are more accessible because of their local focus,” she said.
“It is not surprising, therefore, to see that students are very satisfied with their experiences – and it is a great acknowledgement of the strong work done by colleges across the country to enable more and more young people to develop high level skills.” Nick Davy (pictured left), higher education policy manager at the Association of Colleges, said: “Higher education is a big part of what colleges offer and it is fantastic to see such recognition of this provision from the students themselves.
“The fact that a number of colleges received a 100 per cent satisfaction rates from their students is a real testament to the high quality education and training that colleges provide.
“Colleges specialise in providing technical and professional alternatives to the three year residential degree.
“They enable students to study closer to home with lower tuition fees, often with smaller class sizes enabling more individual tuition.”
The FE colleges with 100 per satisfaction ratings were Bournville College, Central Bedfordshire College, Eastleigh College, Kendal College, Kensington and Chelsea College, Leeds College of Building, South Devon College and West Herts College.
Maggie Cawthorn (pictured right), director of curriculum at Kendal College, said: “We are absolutely delighted.
“These results show us that the learning experience we offer is enjoyed by our students and is therefore a credit to the fantastic teaching staff we have.
“We will continue to build on this and look forward to delivering even more quality degree programmes for the new 2015/2016 students.”
Jan Edrich, principal of Eastleigh College, said: “We are delighted with the results of this national learner survey.
“Our personalised approach through small groups ensures students are given the support required, which we believe has led to the 100 per cent satisfaction score.”
Shakira Martin (pictured left), NUS vice president (Further Education), said: “The continued satisfaction of students studying higher education in
colleges is a testament to the incredibly high standards of teaching being delivered in the face of sustained attacks on college provision, like catastrophic budget cuts.”
Meanwhile, the survey showed that 85 per cent of full-time FE college students reported that staff were enthusiastic about what they were teaching, the same proportion as last year, and 82 per cent reported that their timetable worked efficiently, one per cent up on last year.
In addition, 82 per cent said that their course had helped them to present themselves confidents, the same as last year.
But the section rating the level of academic support showed a slight drop in the proportion of learners who
Madeleine Atkins
said that they had been able to contact staff when they needed to (83 per this year compared to 84 per in 2014).
Professor Madeleine Atkins (pictured right), chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, said the survey, conducted by Ipsos MORI, provided “detailed and robust data” which would be used extensively by colleges “to improve the quality of their teaching and learning”.
She added: “It is also valuable in supporting prospective students and their parents and advisors in helping choose which higher education institution to select.”
Labour leadership contender Yvette Cooper explains why she thinks that 21st century education should be more geared towards the workplace.
Education — life long education — now more than ever should be at the heart of what Labour stands for.
It is crucial to our fight against inequality and injustice, but also to a strong modern economy as well.
Yet far from supporting the vital education we need, this government has cut it back, and nowhere more so than in Further Education.
Indeed the sector that is so crucial for the vocational skills and adult education we need has been hardest hit of all.
That has to stop. And Labour has to have the confidence to campaign for an alternative plan.
As Labour leader, my top priorities would be tackling inequality and ensuring we have a curriculum to educate young people for the future.
I want to broaden our vision of a good education to include wellbeing and the whole student, their happiness and confidence.
For me, the most important thing is raising standards, focusing on the quality of teaching and inspiring teachers without being so prescriptive that it inhibits good teachers from being able to use their experience and their ideas.
Everyone should be afforded the same opportunities, no matter what their background – and Labour has championed this.
The Tories began their period in office by cutting the education maintanence allowance and has begun this parliament by cutting another £450m from FE.
We need to work with business to create more apprenticeships.
We had a policy before the election of giving more control over the funding to business in return for more, higher quality apprenticeships, but I think we need to do more to develop that with business directly and to make that a real proposition.
The public sector needs to pull its weight too — as too many Government departments and agencies are very poor at employing apprentices and we need to do better and more public contracts should specify the need to create apprenticeships.
Education has got to be centre stage for us at the next election. From Sure Start right through to lifelong learning: this isn’t just about children and young people. Education in the 21st century has to be more closely linked to the workplace, and has to be a lifelong process.
FE colleges are a deeply undervalued resource in achieving that.
Too often they have been a Cinderella sector with little support and little understanding from policy makers.
In devolving more control over skills, apprenticeships and business support to city and county regions, I want to ensure that we see a revival in our FE sector — playing a real role in ensuring that young people and people of all ages can access high quality flexible education.
It’s time for a vocational revolution so we get rid of the snobbery about the difference between academic and vocational education and properly value the talents of all.
Labour leadership candidate Liz Kendall looks to the German system for an apprenticeship model that she would like to see followed in this country.
My dad left school at 16. His formal education stopped but he developed his skills in the workplace.
He trained on the job and studied in his spare time, eventually passing his banking and finance exams.
Together, he and my mum were able to buy a house and create a good life for their children.
You rarely hear that kind of story today. If you leave school without the right qualifications you’re written off.
If you’re in a low paid job you are likely to be stuck there.
All too often, learning stops at the end of formal education — and that’s a huge problem when too many young people leave school without the qualifications they need.
Thanks to the Tories, there are now 500,000 fewer adult learners in the UK than there were in 2010 — a drop of almost 20 per cent from 3,540,500 adult learners participating in Government funded Further Education in 2009/10 to just 2,929,600 in 2013/14.
And the FE sector has faced enormous funding cuts under the Tories: earlier this year David Cameron announced a 24 per cent cut to the FE sector, which comes on top of £1bn worth of cuts to the adult skills budget over the last Parliament.
Further Education has always been a vital route for people who want to get on in life, especially people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
It provides a ladder into high skilled, high paid work, giving people a chance to have a career rather than a minimum wage job or a life on the dole.
The Conservatives claim to support aspiration but their dismal record of repeated and deep cuts to FE demonstrate that they only care about the aspirations of a privileged few.
It is in the DNA of the Labour Party to support aspiration for all, no matter where you start from in life. As Labour leader, I’d make sure FE is given the support it deserves.
We’ve got to give people the chance to learn and develop skills throughout their lives.
You can’t have power and control over your own life if you don’t have the skills you need.
We need to take a different approach.
The Labour Party I’d lead would see FE shaped at the local level, so that young people who want to stay in the communities they grew up in have the right skill sets for the local jobs market.
And if we want our young people to be able to compete with the very best in the world then we have to learn lessons from the very best in the world in how we can help them.
If you look at Germany, for example, apprenticeships there are generally likely to last longer and be of a higher quality.
We have to make sure that Britain can support people to get training to a similar extent.
We have to make sure apprenticeships are there are there for young people as well as older workers; and that small businesses are able to employ apprentices as easily as large firms.
We have to enable employers to make sure apprenticeships are providing the right skills, and we need to work with trade unions who are well-placed to advocate for the needs of apprentices — apprentices who can be an important part of the increase in trade union membership we want to see.
Building a fairer, more equal and prosperous society must be the aim of the next Labour government. More support for the FE sector, and better apprenticeships, are a crucial part of that.
Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham proposes reforming the funding model for post-18 education, including apprenticeships, as part of his vision for FE.
This week is a time of nervous anticipation for many young people, as they wait to find out their A-level and AS-level results
Newpapers will be full of jubilant teenagers excited about their next step in life, but we hear little about the 50 per cent of young people who do not go to university.
It is a telling silence.
And it can be little wonder that many of our young people do not choose to take up apprenticeships, when they hear little of them.
They don’t know how to find the places, they don’t hear about the success stories, and few of their friends and families can help them.
We have to raise the status of technical education to give it equal value to academic education.
This is vital to our economy, vital to ensuring that we have the high tech skills of the future, and vital to the futures of millions of young people across the country.
A lack of focus on technical education is one of our greatest public policy failures of the last 50 years.
It cannot be allowed to continue.
A bright young person who wants to get an apprenticeship should have the same ambition, excitement and sense of purpose as their counterparts who want to go to university.
Just like university students, they should have an easy way to learn about the opportunities across the UK and be able to apply for them in the same way.
The best way to raise standards in schools is to give all young people hope that there is something waiting for them after school.
So if I’m elected leader, I will propose a national Ucas-style system for apprenticeships — one that all providers have to use — and extend access to student finance to help people to move to take up an apprenticeship.
I will also propose a reformed funding model for post-18 education, looking at a progressive graduate tax to replace tuition fees for university, and extend support for apprenticeships.
No young person should have to start their career weighed down by a millstone of debt.
Labour will lift it off them.
We should be able to make a simple promise to all our young people.
If you work hard at school and get the good grades, you will know you will be able to get a high-quality apprenticeship or place at university.
It is at the heart of what a Labour Party under my leadership will be all about.
Making sure everyone, no matter who they are or where they are from, can get on in life.
These three men have been sentenced after conspiring together in a loans scam at a London college.
Nathan Simmons (pictured above left), aged 30, admitted eight counts of fraud after hacking into a colleague’s account and signing-off 44 higher education loan applications between December 2012 and May 2013 while working as an administrator at East London’s Newham College, Southwark Crown Court heard.
Leon Marshalleck (pictured above centre), 29, and Peter Couzens (pictured above right), 30, both admitted fraud and converting criminal property after they passed their details to Simmons on the promise they could keep a cut of the loan cash in their name.
The SLC paid out £117,416, but loans worth £209,571 were blocked.
Simmons, of Meath Road, Stratford, was jailed for two years and Marshalleck and Couzens were both ordered to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work on Friday.
Prosecutor Simon Sandford said: “Investigations by the SLC revealed that 44 students had been paid student loans on the basis they had enrolled at Newham College when in fact they hadn’t.”
He added: “Mr Simmons was the inside man who was an employee of Newham College who used another employee’s login without that employee’s knowledge to authorise bogus applications for loans.
“The other defendants allowed their personal details and bank account to be used for bogus applications,” he said. “They then withdrew the money in cash in return for a cut of the proceeds.”
Father-of-three Simmons, who has previous convictions for affray, battery and possession of cannabis, and served a seven-year jail term for heroin and firearms offences in 2007, secured the part-time job on a temporary basis at the college through his girlfriend’s mother, an examinations officer, but Judge Andrew Goymer said she was “wholly innocent” of involvement in the fraud.
He said: “He [Simmons] had himself been in prison so it looked like a very good opportunity for an ex-offender to better himself and turn his back on crime and that indeed is what he should have done.
“Unfortunately, he chose to let her down badly by going back to crime at the very place where he worked.”
Marshalleck and Couzens each received £6,159 from the SLC through the scam, keeping a cut of at least £1,000 each and handing over the rest to unknown third parties.
Couzens, of Stroud Green Road, Finsbury Park, who has no previous convictions, told police he had provided his name and account details “to make easy money” but did not fill out the applications himself, the court heard.
In addition to the 120 hours of unpaid work, Marshalleck, of Woodville Road, Surrey, who had previous convictions of cannabis and counterfeit currency possession and further drugs offences, received a six month suspended prison sentence, while Couzens was ordered to pay £1,000 compensation.
A spokesperson for the college said: “The SLC contacted us about the irregularities. An investigation took place immediately, as a result of which, the staff member concerned was dismissed and the Police were notified.”
A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said more information would be provided about how it planned to reclaim the lost money for the SLC in November.
An SLC spokesperson said: “The SLC detected these fraudulent applications and cooperated with the police during their investigation.
“The SLC’s counter fraud services team works closely with police and other law enforcement agencies to tackle student funding fraud and protect the public purse.”
Image: Nathan Simmons, Leon Marshalleck and Peter Couzens
It had singing, it had dancing, it had speeches and it had an international flavour — no, it wasn’t the WorldSkills opening ceremony, but a hugely colourful visit to a Sao Paulo school by Team UK.
From a schoolboy violinist playing God Save the Queen to pupils dressed as the Village People dancing to Macho Man, every moment of the visit to Plinio Damasco Penna, in the north of the city, will live long in the memory of WorldSkills UK competitors.
The visit kicked off the day of the opening ceremony and came as part of the WorldSkills One School One Country programme in which all the competitor nations and regions are assigned to a local school where children then find out about their team, get to meet them the day before competition and present their findings to the competitors.
And the youngsters at Plinio Damasco Penna had four months to carry out their research, to produce a show with pupils acting out The Beatles’ Twist and Shout, among other impressive and fun representations of UK culture. They also put on demonstrations of their own culture.
In return, the children experienced the Team UK chant led by 21-year-old construction metal work competitor Christopher Hanson, from City Training Bradford and Richard Allan Engineering, and mechanical engineering apprentice Andrew Beel, also aged 21, from New College Lanarkshire and Pacson Valves. The youngsters were also invited to join in for a second rendition.
Hairdressing competitor Eleni Constantinou, 22 and from Coleg Sir Gar and Tino Constantinou hairdressers, said: “It was really good to see how much they wanted to support us and how much effort they put into making us feel welcome.
“I wasn´t expecting to get an experience like that at all. It meant so much to see how they respected us and what we do. It really was lovely.”
School principal Adriana Cunha Premoli said: “We researched all about UK with the children, and thankfully some of our teachers have been there before.
“The children loved putting on the presentations for Team UK and we wish them all the best of luck for the competition.”
The arrival of British ambassador to Brazil Alex Ellis later complemented the morning, which got under way at around 9am with flag-waving children lining the school entrance for Team UK.
He told competitors: “A really big thanks to all of you for coming to Brazil. There are worse places to be, but thank you very much indeed for coming.
“It’s fantastic you’re here — have a great week. This country is all about that — I’ve never lived in a place with so much expression and popular culture. It’s like no other country in the world in that respect. Do us proud this week — be stars.”
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Also in the UK visiting party was Skills Funding Agency and Education Funding Agency chief executive Pater Lauener in his capacity as official UK delegate to WorldSkills 2015.
He told FE Week: “The sheer exuberance of the welcome that was conveyed by the children and also the Team UK competitors joining in as incredible. There were more selfies being taken than I´ve seen all year. It was just terrific and it was great to see the ambassador come along as well and be part of the occasion.
“It was a big change from my day job but it was really interesting coming to see a school in a not particularly affluent part of Sao Paulo, but I’ve seen some great teachers and kids that want to build their lives and the skills that WorldSkills is about will help them build their careers and lives.”
Mr Ellis told FE Week: “This has been a fantastic visit. It’s great to have a host school go to such effort to impress our competitors and also for them to see a real bit of life in Sao Paulo. It´s not a posh end of the city, but you can see the amount of creativity and passion that exists in a place like this.
“I hope this visit will help the children here realise there is a world beyond Sao Paulo. This is a huge city of 20m people and so it can be hard to think of the world beyond. But there is Britain and a lot of the things the children were doing this morning, like singing and dancing, was related to the UK and that’s what I hope the children get — the idea of a world beyond and the UK should be part of that.
“Obviously, Team UK have to perform to their highest possible standard and be great ambassadors for the country, but at the same time I also hope they get to see a little bit of Brazil and think ‘this is interesting, this is somewhere I could come, this is somewhere I could learn a bit and where I could teach a bit’. The future is going to be internationalization.”
He added: “I used to be a teacher. My father was a head teacher and my grandfather was a teacher, so it´s great to get out and do things like this.
“And also we want to build up relationships at all levels in Brazil — it´s not just about me, it´s about all the people that come here from the UK and from WorldSkills. It´s about the kids in the school here and that we all understand a little bit more about each other — that is the best kind of diplomacy.”
Nick Davy (pictured left), higher education policy manager at the Association of Colleges, said: “Higher education is a big part of what colleges offer and it is fantastic to see such recognition of this provision from the students themselves.
Shakira Martin (pictured left), NUS vice president (Further Education), said: “The continued satisfaction of students studying higher education in